Solidarity and Mainstream Dialects: A Puzzle in Three Acts

Part I

Paulo Freire—-personal hero—-discusses solidarity as one of the major pieces of liberation and humanization. I want to take a brief look at what this means; then I want to look at some widely known linguistic principles about mainstream and nonmainstream dialects in order to make sense of James Gee’s—-another hero—-statement that while mainstream dialects (Discourses, in his terms) are good for obtaining social goods, it is nonmainstream Discourses that lead their speakers to solidarity. I think this creates a major puzzle in modern education, a puzzle for which I have no solution, but which I think is crucial to put out there. Here goes.

[I’m trying to keep these shorter—-per some requests, haha—-so I will need to skimp on some evidence to back up some claims. I’ll try to mark certain points with an * to acknowledge places where I would like to give more support if anyone is curious or skeptical…]

A very quick snapshot of Freire: he rose to fame as an educator in Brazil who believed that part of what kept Brazilian peasants oppressed was their illiteracy. I only mention this because his work is a criticism of education is not directed at US education literally, but when you read him, the connections are shocking. For Freire, real education must lead to the liberty and humanity (humanization) of the students; in other words, a real education will not serve to oppress and dehumanize student. Makes sense. That problem is that if we are not careful, wide scale education can have major oppressive and dehumanizing effects, even if that’s not our intention (my point, not necessarily his). If we are to liberate people (which includes humanization), for Freire, an education must encourage them to perceive the structure of the world in a critical fashion such that, if they are deemed oppressive or dehumanizing, the students will not be moved to simply fit into this structure as it stands; rather, they will be moved to transform that structure so that it, and all those inside of it, are all free to pursue their humanity, not just exist as “beings-for-others” who spend their lives working only for the benefit of those in charge. So for Freire, education must lead to transformation, not simply adaptation to the world as it is. This is perhaps THE major tenet of "critical pedagogy" (Freirean pedagogy).


So for Freire, education is the pursuit of full humanity, but he says "The pursuit of full humanity, however, cannot be carried out in isolation or individualism, but only in fellowship and solidarity."

So this might be a good fight to have. Is solidarity an important enough part of the human experience such that an education that isolates, that values and rewards isolation, is in essence oppressive, even dehumanizing? (also, what if it encourages isolation/discourages solidarity among some groups more than others? Now it gets a little scary…) Well, I’m of the mind to think yes, that solidarity is so important to all we value in life—-though perhaps might be strikingly missing from the standard view of "the American Dream"—-that an education which devalues and discourages it ought not to be fixed, as it were, but ought to be transformed.

But even if I’m alone in this, I think we can all agree that if our educational system is, say, neutral on the solidarity of members of some groups, but is downright intolerant of solidarity among other groups—-that this system is deeply flawed and even vicious.

Part II

So what am I getting at? Let’s look at some “facts” (or at least some widely accepted and longly held enough views) of linguistics and language dialects.

Language are often represented as existing in pure and “broken” or impure forms. In English, we tend to view one dialect as correct (usually called Standard English, or SE), and all others as just 'bad English'. The truth, however, is that SE is no more correct, in linguistic terms, than other dialect, and that the reason it is viewed as “good English” is purely political—-a matter of power, not of anything inherent in the language and its rules, only a matter of who speaks it and who doesn’t. Again, this is not my opinion, but is pretty much agreed upon by the entire field of linguistics at least since William Labov’s work in the late 1960s.

When I say that all dialects are equal in “linguistic terms” what I mean is that all forms of a language can be called dialects when they are a) rule-governed and b) predictable. Most of us are familiar with the major rules of SE: don’t use double negatives; “saw” is the past tense of “see”; subjects and verbs must agree in number, etc. All SE native speakers learn these rules in the home and in their communities, and then the rules are reinforced in the form of drilling in classrooms—at least they were when I was a kid. None of these rules, however, hold for all English dialect--a very important point!* (Notice for now that they are reinforced but not learned in school*; this is another huge point that would be great to fight about.) Rules govern SE and if you were to listen to SE speakers, you could also predict, for the most part, the grammatical forms they would use as they form sentences. They don’t just use grammar randomly. Despite extremely minor errors here and there (‘brung’ instead of ‘brought’ for example), even very young children have mastered what seem like infinite webs of rules that govern their native languages/dialects*.

But the idea that out of all the dialects of English that only SE is rule governed and predictable is just wrong—-and even worse than wrong, because what it really does is allows us to spot those born and raised in nonSE homes and communities; it allows us to spot outsiders, but it almost never impedes communication. (*Another major point).

One other major point that all sociolinguists generally know is that languages are not just composed of words, but that they are thoroughly value-laden. To speak a language is, to a very large extent, to extol the values that underlie it. Thus, when cultures have been forced to speak languages of people who have overtaken them, they have lost more than just bunches of words and grammatical rules; they have lost entire depictions of the world, based on the values and identity of a culture that has come to see the world in this way. Modern sociolinguists-—and especially the school called New Literacy Studies (NLS)-—hold that language and identity are intimately linked. In fact, this may be a weak version of the view; a stronger version might hold that language and identity are one, that to deny a language is to deny an entire identity*. But I don’t want to digress here too much. Perhaps this needs another post.

NLS co-founder James Paul Gee uses the term Discourse (with a capital “D”) instead of dialect because the latter only refers to the words and grammar rules, but the former refers to the entire “Identity kit” which includes beliefs, values, gestures, etc. For Gee, a Discourse is more like a social identity; and we all have many. We all know that we talk differently in different social settings: we would report the exact same event in very different language if we were talking to friends, to professors, to parents, on a first date, in a job interview, while teaching a class, etc. (Each of these would be an example of a Discourse.) But it’s not only the language that changes. Different Discourses can have fundamentally different values. The Discourse of being a good friend has a different underlying set of values than the Discourse of being a good football player, etc. There is no reason, for Gee, that we need to worry about holding such conflicting values within ourselves, for that’s just what we do; it doesn’t make us hypocritical or schizophrenic or anything. According to Gee, we all master many Discourses as we go through life, and some will lead us towards certain social goods (jobs, money, social standing), where as others will lead us away from these goods. Gee calls the former “dominant Discourses” and the latter “nondominant Discourses.” Mastering the Discourse of school would be a great example of a dominant Discourse. If you can master all that comes with this discourse—-the values, language, attitudes, mannerisms, beliefs, etc.—-you will have more access to succeed in certain domains that someone who fails such mastery will struggle with. And the success in these domains-—college, professional life, etc.-—will lead to certain social good, to the American Dream, as they say.

But there are reasons why we master certain nondominant Discourses as well. Mastering the Discourse of being a die-hard Red Sox fan will not lead me to money, jobs, social status—-but it has its rewards; it welcomes me into a community, and in this community we have solidarity. The same would hold for any nondominant Discourse for Gee: street gangs, class clowns, birdwatchers, for example. What Gee does not emphasize, to my knowledge, is that dominant Discourses are not only good for leading to social goods, they are flat out bad for leading to solidarity. This can be seen in all kinds of scenarios where people lose their community ties in a trade off for “success” in certain domains. For example, stories are rampant about the “choice” that inner-city students have between succeeding in school and maintaining their social standing (solidarity) in their home communities. We hear of kids who have to literally hide their books so that they won’t lose their friend or even face physical harm for taking on that social identity (good student Discourse). I personally don’t think this issue can be underestimated when we talk about how to “fix” all these education problems we have*.

Part III

So if Gee is right that mainstream Discourses lead to social goods, but not to solidarity—-that they, in fact, deny solidarity with other, nonmainstream Discourses—-then we can see some real problems in American schooling. If Freire is right that there is no liberation, not humanity without solidarity; and if our schools—by forcing students to assume a system of Discourses that will threaten their solidarity, especially the less mainstream the communities from which they hail—then we have some real problems that will not be fixed by “higher standards” or “accountability.”

Here is the argument in syllogistic form:

Premise one: Education that seeks to keep people from solidarity cannot be called liberating or humanizing (or, if you prefer the stronger view, is oppressive and dehumanizing).

Premise two: US education demands that students-—especially nonmainstream students—-master mainstream Discourses in order to be good students, but these Discourses will keep them from solidarity.

Therefore… Well, we’re in trouble.

And, as per the mission of this blog, if we simply attempt to fix education (that is, to make it even better at doing this terrible thing it does), then we are not headed toward a future of a liberated humanized citizenry; in fact, until we transform the very principles that underlie these ideas, we are more likely headed for the opposite.